Change is inevitable in business. Companies have to change their structure, reorganize teams, modernize processes, and more. These changes can affect your technologies, workgroups, and service options.
For employees, organizational change can be frustrating, overwhelming, and frightening. Therefore, as a leader, you must be prepared to help your employees get through the changes. If a change is coming up for your company, these steps can help you manage the process.
Identify the Changes
Change may be inevitable for a growing business, but it should never be a surprise. Define the change by explaining to everyone which areas and processes are involved. Do not only say that there will be a change.
Also, explain why there should be a change. If you can justify the changes in advance, your employees will be less resistant. From here, your employees will adapt better and with less confusion. This will also make employees feel like they are part of the change rather than collateral damage.
Determine Who Is Affected
As you look at the need for change, you should remember that the impact will not be limited to processes and business areas. People are impacted as well, and some are more directly affected than others.
Identify the people and departments that will endure the brunt of the change. Then, work with these people specifically to help them prepare for and manage the change. This will give the people being individually impacted more time to cope, which will make the change smoother and more effective.
Plan and Communicate
Understanding the need for and the extent of change is conceptually important. However, you also need a practical plan. Work to define a plan for change. The plan should be detailed and clear. Once the plan is established, share it with your employees.
This communication allows employees to understand how the change will affect them on a daily basis. Many problems associated with change can be mitigated by clear communication. Since change is often chaotic, miscommunication is easy. It is up to you to make sure that everyone knows exactly what is going on.
Provide Training and Support
In many cases, having a clear plan is important but not enough to fully support employees throughout the process. Instead of leaving employees to figure things out, you can help them with training.
With structured training sessions, you will provide your employees with the support they need for success. If some employees are struggling more than the rest, do not hesitate to give them extra attention.
These employees should not feel isolated or alienated. Instead, additional training and support can encourage better employee performance.
Promote, Develop, Hire
No matter how well you prepare, some employees simply respond to change better than others. Even with appropriate measures, you will experience resistance from a certain number of people within your organization.
That is why you should use the best practices to develop employees for the challenges ahead. Promote employees who are passionate about the changes. These people can be your leaders in implementing them.
As you develop this talent from within your company, you may also need to consider hiring someone new. A new hire will offer a fresh perspective, and they will not experience the same resistance. This can help transition your work culture as seamlessly as possible.
Implement
So far, these steps have all been in preparation for the change. While this preparation process is essential, there will come a moment when it is time to act. You must implement the change, but it must be handled correctly. Implementation must be done carefully and deliberately.
Even with proper preparation, your employees are likely to experience some frustration. If you are intentional with your implementation, you can mitigate this frustration and keep potential conflicts to a minimum.
This becomes even more difficult if you are working with more than one change. In some cases, you may benefit from a progressive change that is implemented in phases. This can give your employees time to cope with the changes little by little, allowing for broader but smoother transition times.
Be sure to have support staff in place to answer questions during implementation, and provide feedback in a positive context to encourage employees to keep moving.
Handle the Change with Grace
Change may be inevitable, but you should not accept that all change is inevitably difficult. If you clearly identify the change and its impact, then you can plan for it.
Move the process along by training your employees, and don’t be afraid to structure your workforce by situating the right employees to guide the change.
Only with this preparation completed can you effectively carry out the implementation of the change for your company’s continued growth.
